The recent survey of Maine voters examined the possible outcomes of five different election scenarios, which included LePage, independent Eliot Cutler and five different potential Democratic challengers.

The recent survey of Maine voters examined the possible outcomes of five different election scenarios, which included LePage, independent Eliot Cutler and five different potential Democratic challengers.

In each case LePage came out ahead, even though he only got 34 to 37 percent support. But in two-way contests against four different individual opponents - three Democrats and one independent, Eliot Cutler - LePage trails by at least eight points.

LePage's senior political advisor, Brent Littlefield, dismisses the survey. He says Public Policy Polling began as a Democratic firm and tries to build awareness of its Web site and business by polling well-known figures, "using their automated dialers, their computerized polling methods, which some have questioned in terms of their accuracy, in order to drive media traffic to increase the number of people viewing their Web site."

The polling firm's automated telephone survey of 1,268 Maine voters was conducted last Friday through Sunday. The poll has a margin of error of 2.8 percent. A portion of the survey that included a smaller sample of just Democrats has a margin of error of 4.4 percent.